


La fille mal guardée

by crookedspoon



Series: Il n’est qu’un pas du bien au mal [1]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham Asylum (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Angst, F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, POV Alternating, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Content, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 10:32:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3647025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/crookedspoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years later, Harley should not be welcoming Jonathan back into her arms – as though he had never left her to pursue his career overseas, but it all feels so familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La fille mal guardée

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RsCreighton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RsCreighton/gifts).



> Written for the prompts "Here's Johnny!" at 1mw's [Weekend Challenge](http://1-million-words.livejournal.com/1128166.html?thread=11622886#t11622886) and "Unreliable Narrator" at genprompt_bingo.
> 
> Many, many thanks to my conductor of light [Neurotoxia](archiveofourown.org/users/neurotoxia) for helping me work out the backstory and for whacking me with the beta stick. Hard. Several times. I deserved it. (Still do.)

It's funny how at a moment's notice your life can revert to patterns you thought long-forgotten, how time seems of no consequence and the experiences you made along the way mere choreographed routines. How these patterns are so ingrained you never think to acknowledge the years spent apart with a simple "How've you been?"

Has it really been years? 

(Indeed it has. You count them on your daughter's age: Lucy's four, so five years it's been. Five long years without a single phone call, without an e-mail or a greeting card. As if he had been nothing but a ghost in your life, a ghost or a dream, both sweet and nightmarish, for the way he'd left you.)

She had just been packing up, floating in the timelessness she experienced at the end of a grueling day when there were no more appointments to keep. The door of the studio banged loudly behind someone unfamiliar or unconcerned with its weight – so no one who'd forgotten a towel or a tutu.

With horror, she realized she'd left her pepper spray at home. Gripping the closest thing at hand, she spun around, heart in her throat. When she saw who stood in front of the gray double doors, she dropped the pointe shoe like a gutted salmon.

"Penelope told me I would find you here," he said, voice softly accented from long exposure to a foreign language, but still so familiar as though she'd heard it only yesterday.

"My God, Jonny..." she whispered half-remembered invocations.

As if to reassure herself he was there in the flesh and not another hallucination brought on by longing, she rushed toward him. She needed the certainty of touch to process what her eyes perceived.

He appeared as overwhelmed by memory as she was, because not another word of greeting escaped those perpetually swollen lips she had once been so greedy for. Though what could they have said, she wondered as she caressed his face, his shoulders, and his arms with trembling hands. Words would ruin the only good thing they had: this unexpected moment of rediscovery, of reconnection, and pure intention, before old grudges could ignite the bridge that spanned the gulf of their shared history.

One look into the bright summer sky that shone behind his eyes and she was gone, gone, gone, pulling him in like the tide, inevitable and unceasing. He bends to her will, after a second of hesitation, as though he had not envisioned this outcome, or if he did, had not thought it possible.

Indeed, she should have slapped him for the audacity of showing his face after not deigning to contact her during all those years, for leaving in the first place, for shutting her out. She might be a fool to initiate this instead of keeping him at a distance and wringing his intentions from his sorry mouth, but old addictions were hard to break and she had never known what was good for her.

(It's funny how the pain he'd caused is now a thing of yesterday, as if it were no longer yours, as if it had all happened to someone else, and you merely witnessed it through TV or second-hand accounts.)

The brief moment of suspense, of waiting, hoping, _praying_ for him to give in, was almost too much, now that he was within reach again after so, so long. Harley had done what she always did: push until she got what she wanted. As always, it worked.

He gripped her hard and kissed her with a passion he only ever displayed while dancing and he swept her away with the sincerity of it. (Could he have missed her, too?)

She moaned into his mouth, tugging at his hair, his clothes, begging for something more than this. She'd have taken anything he was willing to offer, so starved had she been for attention – for _his_ attention and the comfort it would bring.

For the moment, she wanted to forget everything else in her life.

Her back hit the barre along the mirror wall and her lungs ceased functioning when he sank to one knee in front of her like accepting ovations from the audience, tugging her tights downward with him. He revered the legs they revealed as though they were still her assets and had not grown plump from disuse. She hissed when his lips brushed her injured knee – long healed, but still painful in its implication. 

She jerked it away as though the bad luck it contained was catching.

"I heard what happened," he murmured and she averted her eyes, fearing that tears might spring from them. So much for a dream, a dream of them onstage together, dancing a _grand pas de deux_ and drawing the eyes of everyone in the theater.

Why would he seek out a failure like her? Why would he still want her like this if she had lost all her worth?

His hands were cold against her heated flesh, and she would have laughed at the thought that just like her, he was a corpse unless he was dancing or fucking. It came out as a broken sob when his mouth touched her throbbing sex, and the world narrowed down to an imbalance of temperature: slick and hot, rolling between her thighs; cold and hard, chilling her spine.

"Jonny..." she whined, as in so many other helpless moments when he was unreachable but still on her mind, and he must have heard the note of desperation in her voice, for this time, he was there – solid and real. This time, she would not be alone.

He kissed her again, long and hard, and his fingers skirted all the ticklish parts of her sides and back that they had once mapped out and not forgotten. It was so much like the time she had come to think of as their own, practicing till late at night, till one or both of them could no longer stand straight, yet had sometimes still found the energy to make love on the changing room floor, a tangle of limbs and laughter and high hopes for the future.

(That life-affirming laughter had since died with your career. You subsist on the gleeful shrieks of your young students, but it's candlelight compared to the midsummer sun, able to chase away the darkness only for a little while. It burns out too fast.)

When he clasped her waist like he would for a lift, she hopped into his embrace, praying he would not mention her weight, so noticeably heavier compared to that of the anorexic ballerinas he must have supported in recent years. 

"I see you haven't lost a bit of your flexibility," he said as he nudged her working leg toward his shoulder. She couldn't tell if the remark was meant to be snide or reassuring. It made her bitter, in any case. Dancers aren't known for their tact.

"Guys like to fuck the flexible type," she retorted, "gives me enough reason to stay in shape despite everything."

"If that's what it takes."

It was strange not to hear him criticize her form or posture, as if her injury had made her unworthy of suggestions or unable to improve. Whatever it was, it hadn't made her too repulsive to fuck – in the next instant he thrust into her. 

She cried out, not from pain or discomfort, but from surprise that he would still want a broken thing like her. Everyone else had dropped her like the proverbial hot brick the moment her career had ended.

Some came back.

(It's funny how much it hurts when loved ones vanish, as though they rip out that part of themselves they've shared with you before, that part you let weasel its way into your heart. But it's not so: that part never leaves, it stays with you and shapes your experience. It's the part you gave them, that part of yourself you've shared in intimate moments when you laid bare your emotions, hopes, and aspirations – that's what your loved ones take away with them.)

You thought it would be all right if they would just come back, would just return what they stole from you, but you can feel it now: the pieces no longer fit. Your experiences since the breakup have warped you, made you incompatible with the versions you had left with each other.

Jonathan pauses, as if he's arrived at the same conclusion you have.

"Relax, Harleen," he snaps his fingers in front of you, unable to ignore how unresponsive you are. It's not like you to become thinky during sex, at least not the you that he remembers, the you that is no longer you. This scrutiny pulls your skin tight, cuts your breath short, sets your teeth on edge. You can no longer disregard what he does to you.

He rests his forehead against yours, discreetly feeling your temperature, thinking you wouldn't notice. But you do, as though you can see inside his mind. He's thinking: I thought you wanted this. Why didn't you say anything if you didn't? I don't recognize you anymore.

(He's thinking: you're a slut, you give it up for anyone, so why not me? You can't deny me this. It's the only thing you're good for now, so be a good fuckdoll and spread your legs wider. I have more important appointments after this.)

Sometimes, you don't recognize yourself anymore either. You're just this body in a mirror, following the routine of someone else's life. It's how you think of yourself when he is there, when he enters your apartment, your life, your _skin_ without asking, when he terrorizes your child in a way she doesn't understand yet, unable to distinguish between good and bad, knowing only fairytale romances, unable to see the evil in the man you loved once, the man who's introduced himself as her daddy.

Daddies can't be evil, right? Especially not one as smooth and charming as your daughter's.

 _Get away from me, you monster,_ you want to scream, but your lips have frozen shut. He's broken off a tooth before. Your tongue worries the gumline above your dental crown that covers up the blemish. 

You feel cold when he pulls out, but you don't find it in you to fake your old fire. In fact, you barely understand your interest in the first place. He lets your legs down gently but keeps you locked in place, between the trinity of him, the barre, and the mirror, his hands on either side of you walling off the space you're allowed to occupy. He's catching his breath, wondering what to do with you.

It's funny how an ocean can be crossed inside a day, but the gap between you remains as immovable as your past no matter how tiny the area you share. You could not unmake any decision or retrace the paths you've taken.

You could not be mended.

He sighs, as though you've made a mistake, as though he's unhappy with you. You close your eyes. You know what's gonna happen next. He turns you around by the shoulders and for a moment you think he's gonna shove it up your ass, unprepared, the way he does when you displease him. You tense, anticipating the pain. 

His hands are warm now as they nudge apart your cooling thighs and guide your injured leg onto the barre. They've sapped your body heat. You flex your toes uncomfortably.

"Look at it, Harleen," he says, "look at your knee. It may feel like it, but it's not the end of the world. You've got something good here, something that still allows you to be part of the theater. You don't have to be ashamed of it for my sake."

His voice is different than you remember, not the voice you had in mind at all. Confused, you open your eyes again. There you are, the body in the mirror, a woman broken in body and in spirit. (He knows. He knows and he accepts.) You blink.

Next to you is another body, with a different face than you expected. It gazes back with clear blue eyes, not the piercing green ones you've come to dread.

"Jonny?" your mirror image asks.

The other face is startled. "Where did you drift off to?"

The tension drained from her all at once. Her supporting leg wobbled and gave way, but Jonny caught her before she collapsed. His arm was secure around her waist even as he tried to heave her up again.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get you to a doctor. You're more than just dehydrated."

She used her weight to her advantage and slipped to the floor, pulling him along with her. He followed suit and sat down, not bothering to pull up either sweatpants or leggings. She crawled on top of him, pressed his back against the mirror with one hand, used the other to guide his flagging erection between her legs. 

"Wouldn't you rather stay here and make love to me?" she cood, remembering that she needed to do this, that it was all she had to offer. She had nothing else to make him want to stay. (Never had, come to think of it.)

He caught her hips before she could sink down on him. "Not now, Harleen. I'm worried about you. Once we get you looked at, we can do anything you're deemed fit enough for, but not until then."

She blinked at him, once, twice, then leaned forward to peck his lips and rest her head against his neck. "You're so good to me, Jonny," she murmured, "but I'm fine. I just want to sleep with you. Real sleep, I mean. To fall asleep and wake up next to you again. That would help me more than going to the doc. I'm so tired..."

"...all right," he said after a pause. It was not what he had in mind when he had come here, she was certain, although she could not fathom why he had shown up. With not a single word or glance had he expressed any sort of regret over how their relationship had ended, nor did she suppose he would. Of course not, it had all been clear cut for him: not everyone received the opportunity to dance with the greats in Russia, even in a small theater company, so even if he went for only a season, it would mean a great boost to his career. He'd taken it for granted that she'd understand.

And she had, somehow, logically, unwillingly, but emotionally she had been very invested in their relationship. She had idolized him and worked so hard to be able to become a great soloist and dance together with him onstage. They had trained for this moment for two years and when she was finally offered her first solo part by the green-eyed demon who had so enchanted her then, Jonny up and vanished, as though she was nothing more to him than a pet project and a convenient way to relieve stress.

Did he expect to pick up where they had left off? Just like this, as if nothing at all had happened in the meantime, as if she hadn't lost the ability to fulfill their shared dream (if shared it was), as if she weren't useless to him now – a broken plaything. She couldn't even keep it together long enough to satisfy him sexually anymore, and although he was a single-minded bastard when it came to the dance, he was not single-minded enough in his pursuit of sexual gratification to simply take it from her.

Whatever his intentions, she would have to find out some other time. She was too exhausted to rack her brains over this. Anxiety wrings all the energy from her. For now, she needed to escape the headache of reality. For now, she had got what she needed: a nest of blankets and a bedfellow who'd keep the nightmares at bay. 

It's funny how you feel safer in the arms of the one who left you to fall prey to another in the first place – precisely that other he's supposed to guard against now. It's funny how you stumble from dependence to dependence. It's funny how the patterns you thought long-forgotten have never vanished from your life, and it's all just like always.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title translates to "The Poorly Guarded Girl" and is the French title of the ballet "The Wayward Daughter."


End file.
